Legal Clinic

The Advocacy Clinic is the longest-running legal clinic in the United States and remains one of the most successful programs of its kind.

In this clinic, students represent their own clients in various types of legal disputes involving criminal, housing, and juvenile law. Under Tennessee’s Student Practice Rule, students who have reached their fourth semester of law school, are allowed to represent clients under the supervision of faculty members. Client representation requires students to engage in the full range of lawyer duties, beginning with client interviews and proceeding through factual investigation, case development, negotiation, and often on to hearings or trial. Thus students, develop a wide range of lawyering skills, including:

– fact investigation
– client interviewing and counseling
– witness interviewing
– developing of case strategy, theme, and theory
– drafting and arguing pretrial motions
– trial preparation and presentation
– negotiating with opposing parties
– developing and exercising professional judgment

The Advocacy Clinic functions like a law firm, with the entire “firm” meeting weekly with clinic faculty and guest speakers to discuss cases, tactics, applicable law and strategy.

The Expungement Mini-Clinic focuses on one of the most significant criminal reentry issues facing people who have been arrested for a crime – cleaning up a person’s criminal record.

Students assist clients with Tennessee’s complex expungement process from conducting the initial interview to preparing the expungement petition. The course integrates statutory interpretation, lawyering skills and ethics through an in-depth study of Tennessee’s expungement statutes, related caselaw and rules of professional conduct. Students build their skills in interviewing, counseling and advocacy through in-class discussions, simulations and interactions with clients.

The Expungement Mini Clinic is a one-credit hour course.

Students will learn transactional legal skills through the representation of small businesses, nonprofit organizations, community-based associations, entrepreneurs, and artists.

Through supervised fieldwork, student attorneys will assume primary responsibility for representing clients with various non-litigation matters. Such matters might include:

– providing advice regarding legal entity choice and forming the entity
– identifying state and local business licensing and permitting requirements
– providing advice regarding tax-exempt status
– drafting governance documents
– negotiating and drafting contracts
– advising entities on employment and independent contractor arrangements
– assisting with trademark and copyright registration

The Transactional Law Clinic provides a valuable service to the community while giving students the unique opportunity to acquire skills, training, and experience essential to representing clients in transactional matters and which are transferable to virtually any practice area.

The Transactional Law Clinic participates in the Law School Certification Program of the United States Patent and Trademark office. Students provide trademark legal services to clients on a pro bono basis, and represent those clients before the USPTO.

Students must have taken Business Associations, and must have taken or be taking Professional Responsibility and Contract Drafting to participate in the Transactional Law Clinic. The Transactional Law Clinic is a six-credit course, offered during the fall and spring semesters.

Students in the Homer A. Jones, Jr. Wills Clinic represent economically disadvantaged clients in estate planning and uncontested young-adult conservatorships. Students interview clients to evaluate their legal needs, then practice drafting and revising and assisting with execution of relevant documents, including wills (with testamentary trusts), powers of attorney, advance directives, and conservatorship pleadings.

The clinic is offered as a four-credit, one-semester course during fall and spring terms. 

Potential clients and inquiries may leave messages on the Wills Clinic’s direct line at (865) 974-8894